Once Upon a Thai...: Hey, we're teachers now!

We’ve now spent one month in the Tha Bo school system at the secondary level, and let me tell you, it is invigorating. First, I’d like to paint you a picture of the school, and then I’ll tell you why it’s great. Okay, ready…Break!

We have about 2,500 students, ranging from age 12 to 18 years old. The grades are referred to as Matyoms (“Mah-tee-yums”): 12-13 year-olds are in Matyom One; 13-14 year-olds are Matyom Two; 14-15 year-olds are in Matyom Three; 15-16 year-olds are in Matyom Four; 16-17 year-olds are in Matyom Five; and 17-18 year-olds are in Matyom Six. There are two different types of English classes: English Breakthrough (EB), which is an English class that meets for roughly one hour per week - and English Focus (EF), which is an intensive English program that meets roughly 4 times per week for one hour each class. Most of the EF students also take some of their other classes in English, like their Math and Science classes. However, all students technically have at least two English classes; one taught by a Thai teacher, and the other taught by a foreigner teacher.

Matyom 1 :)

M1 so freaking cute

Each Matyom is broken down into about 10 different classes - there are usually between 40 and 50 students per class. These classes are generally "tracked" by ability with a number designation, and they each have their own classroom and attend all of the same classes together. When referring to a specific class, you list the Matyom (or grade-level) first, then “slash” the specific class, or track. For example, I teach English Focus classes that meet 4 days per week to Matyom 1/9, 1/10, and 4/10. I also teach English Breakthrough to 7 different Matyom 4 classes: 4/1 through 4/7.

Matyom 4 goofballs

Here’s the twist: some years they track the students so that Track 1 is the uppermost level of ability and the higher-numbered tracks indicate classes that are at a less advanced level; other years, it is reversed and the higher-numbered tracks are the most advanced, while Track 1 indicates the least advanced level. In other words, it takes some time to accurately gage your students’ abilities, strengths, and weaknesses as a new classroom teacher.

Since the students have their own classrooms, this means that the teachers come to the students. We don’t have English classrooms; we travel to our students’ classrooms to teach – so, remember, don’t leave anything behind! White-board markers are a prized commodity and should be treated as such, since whiteboards are the highest form of technology present in any of our English classrooms.

Umbrellas....for the rain....chaaah right.

Bob's Brief "Butt In"

Bob here. I wanted to jump in and give my schedule here at Tha Bo School. Here is a list of my classes: English Focus (These classes meet 4 times per week for one hour per class) – 2/1, 2/2, 5/1, 5/2; and English Breakthrough (These classes meet once per week for a one hour class) – 1/6, 1/7, 1/8. All of the kids are awesome in their own way. The younger kids (M1) are my largest classes. All three classes have 50 kids and they are crammed into these basement rooms that frequently lose electricity. On top of that, Thai kids are loud. By loud, I mean they really enjoying yelling Thai jibberish sporadically throughout the lesson. I could be teaching them about introducing themselves, and three random kids will run up to me in the middle of class and say, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TEACHER I AM FINE THANK YOU, KOH TOD BLA HR UDL K JLD.” Usually, I just stare at them and say a polite, “Thank you, Benz,” and continue on with the lesson. As the weeks have progressed, the M1 classes have become really great with listening and enjoying the lessons. Turning everything into a game helps and it seems like the harder I try to entertain, as well as teach, the more we enjoy each other’s company.

My M2 classes spend 4 days a week with me. Now remember everyone, M2 kids are between 13 and 14 years old. This is the time in a person’s life where moods are manic and other things are developing and dropping. With that in mind, these classes take on split personalities. They are slightly smaller than my M1 classes (38 kids in one class and 41 in the other), but with their slightly more rebellious demeanors, their presence is quite powerful. At times, my activities and games will woo the students and I will have the entire class following my lead like I am the conductor and they are my orchestra; other times, my activities make it seem like I told them I was taking them to an amusement park, but after getting out of the car, they stepped out into a Crate and Barrel.

In a way, this is a good thing; it tests my ability to switch gears at any given point in time. When that first paper airplane flies across the room, I know that the clock is ticking and I need to do something fast. If my current banter were to continue, I could quickly find myself in a gauntlet of Yu-Gi-Oh Card flinging; drooling, sleepy kids scattered throughout the room, and teenage Thai shrieks reverberating down the halls that one would assume may be alarming to a passerby (in all reality, episodes like the one described above are frequent at Tha Bo).

It gets tiring creating lesson plans with no general direction or experience four times per week, but I would much rather do that than teach out of the book. For some people, it may be a feasible way to teach - for me and my Thai students, it is not the code that will crack the safe. Thai students have great energy and are amazing people, but they need teachers who are going to be like a fly buzzing English into their ears even when they try to swat them away. Initially, they will push away, but hopefully with persistence and determination (that kind of sounds a bit like a description used in a Gatorade ad - my apologies), they the will understand the importance of what we are trying to teach them.

According to a very interesting article I recommend reading:

(http://asiancorrespondent.com/78647/thai-education-failures-part-4-dismal-english-language-education/)

"On the 2010 Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Thailand ranked 116th out of 163 countries."

The article goes on to talk about how Thai students are not unintelligent, they are just afraid of speaking English. Our biggest challenge will be to to rid these students of their silly English phobias. Back to you Em.

M2/1 Crew

Watch out for these guys!

I am a bit jealous of the bow ties.

The school campus consists of 5 main education buildings with a smattering of different food options, including 2 open-air cafeterias, and a canteen for snacks and supplies. One of the features of our school campus that I am very grateful for is the English office, which is (usually) air-conditioned, unless the power goes out, which does happen relatively frequently. We share the office with the other foreign English teachers and some absolutely wonderful, extraordinarily helpful and kind Thai teachers. It is a great place to cool off and relax in between classes with great company.

I like it here. It is crazily different from any other learning environment I’ve ever been a part of before, and there are a number of different facets of this system that may take a little time to adjust to, and I end up being really exhausted by the end of the day - but it is pushing us to work on a plethora of life and job skills I need to expand on, and it is doing so in a pretty intense way.

Some key things I am learning: Flexibility, some big-time Classroom Management Skills, Spontaneity, Creativity, and how to be more entertaining than I’ve ever felt compelled to be in my entire life – even more than in my 4^th grade acting classes at the Harwich Junior Theater... where I was never actually in a play, but I did stand on a stage and pretend to be The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland in front of close to five other individuals.

As a teacher, I consider myself to be a couple things (I am running the risk of sounding like I’m turning this segment of the post into a cover letter, but I’m just going to go ahead and sort of do that. Maggie Nugent, please stop cringing): In the classroom I do my best to be as warm and welcoming and friendly as possibly to create an environment where students feel comfortable, encouraged and unthreatened to share their thoughts and ideas. But, I have never, in any way, shape, or form, considered myself to be an entertainer. In fact, any of my students from the past would most likely describe me as “Really nice! But kind of weird.” Or maybe they’d say something like, “She’s too happy, and a little awkward.”

As an English teacher in Thailand, however, you usually feel as though you are put on stage to amuse your students. Bob often describes this new employment role as being half stand-up comic, half teacher. As a general rule, Thais love to have fun. If something is not fun, it is often seen as not worth doing – yes, including school. If your class is not fun or entertaining, you should probably expect to have students, parents, and teachers alike complaining that the students can’t possibly learn in such an environment. How do you expect a child to learn if your lessons are boring?! A wonderful question, right? Think back to any class in your past, foreign language classes in particular, and you might see their point. (Even though this expectation can cause for some excruciating hours of frustrating lesson planning.)

Of course the key here is balance. You cannot just shamelessly entertain your students with basic games and shiny prizes and props; you must be teaching them something - Something important and useful, something easy to acquire and remember. And yes, you must do so as the only teacher in a tiny, cramped classroom which often reaches well-over 100 degrees, filled with fifty crazy 12-18 year-olds, while they all laugh and comment on how sweaty us “falang” teachers always are. These are some of our biggest challenges.

This job is difficult and wonderful. Here is an outline of a day in our lives: We wake up (sometimes to an alarm, but more often to the barking dogs in our driveway and the morning “music” coming from our neighbors’ rooster plantation), go to school from about 7:30am until 4:00pm, and then spend most of the rest of the day planning lessons and brainstorming ways to really get those lessons to work - racking our brains for ways to engage the whole class, ways to challenge them adequately, and ways to teach them what we think will be most important for them to know, all while factoring in our technological and special limitations. (There are also two showers per day and a couple amazing and/or interesting meals mixed in there somewhere.)

I mentioned just before that our classrooms are small. We’ve been trying out a number of techniques to conquer this obstacle. There is not enough room in our classes to have everyone stand up to perform a group activity, not even if we push all of the desks to the side. Standing close together sometimes makes the students more uncomfortable because of the heat. I’ve tried having half of the students up and about working on an active lesson, while the other half works on a sit-down task, but generally the sit-down group gets really restless and bored, as they are distracted by and envious of the active group activity (which is basically happening right on top of them), and therefore they don’t focus on their task. I’ve tried a couple of different lessons that involve bringing the whole group of students outside, but the heat and the sun is usually too intense for them to enjoy the freedom from their confining classroom. Activities that I’d assume any class would really enjoy, sometimes don’t go as well as you’d think because the heat makes the students lethargic and somewhat grumpy. They spend a majority of the time complaining that they actually want to go back inside. That means the activity you stayed up half of the night inventing, critiquing and perfecting just flopped.

As my admirable and wise cooperating teachers from Oyster River High School would often remind me in my dark and dreary times of lesson-floppage: Teaching is a rollercoaster – especially in the early years: when you and your lessons and your students succeed, your highs are euphoric; when they don’t, it’s a very low low. That’s exactly how I envision this rollercoaster of a year to go, and I’m am comforted in remembering that it is this way for many, if not all, new teachers. Even the really amazing ones. So thank you, Kate and Trevor, for all you have taught me about teaching – and, of course, about lots of other things too :)

Another BIG challenge we face is that most of the resources online where we search for help and inspiration are nearly all designed for young learners. It almost seems as though the Internet has decided that ESL/ELL/EFL students are only comprised of toddlers and/or primary school-attendees. What about the ‘tweens and teens, Internet? I can only reference Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Harry Potter, and Tony Stark so many times before they realize I have close to zero knowledge of anything cool or trendy. I will be honest; I have designed a decent portion of lessons around American and Thai celebrities, whom I know nothing about - just for sheer cool-teacher points. Isn’t that the awful? I’m embarrassed. But it works. A number of my 12-year-old students can now accurately convey to you in English something like this: “I really don’t like homework. I don’t like Joey Boy. I like Bodyslam, and I really like One Direction.” I know next-to-nothing about any of those things, except for the thing they like least…

With zero experience in teaching English as a Foreign Language, I find myself desperately in need of cooler resources. I’m trying to just use my brain, but as aforementioned, what goes on in there is not always (or usually, or often) considered to be “cool.” If you have any advice, ideas, resources, websites, contacts, etc… that might help us out, please let us know. We’re always looking for ways to make our classes even more fun. Any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated!

Regardless, I am genuinely happy to be working in a place that makes me want to always work so hard to make things great. On a daily basis we impersonate animals, run around the room, jump over things, yell, make paper airplanes, sing, clap, crawl on the floor, hide under chairs, dress up as superheroes, stand on top of desks, pretend to fall asleep on top of anything, and make jokes that only a class full of exuberant, care-free, amazing Thai students would laugh at. That’s one of my favorite parts of this country; their eagerness to laugh and play and have fun keeps you lively and energetic. It makes us more daring, too. You can’t stop to worry about your limitations or about being embarrassed. Something will always go “wrong,” but there is no time to dwell on it. And be aware: You will be laughed at. No doubt about it. But it’s not in a hurtful way – it’s always in good fun. Typically, you will have no idea why what you just did was so funny either. But they are so ready to enjoy life that they will turn any small incidence into a hilarious occurrence. With such eagerness and positivity to work with, I hope you can see why we are so determined to make good use of it. I want to bring my A-game to class because they provide us with such great personalities to work with. Yes, they get bored easily, and if you can’t think of a fun way to get their attention, then they will be left to do so on their own.

It’s funny to think of how quickly everything seems to have changed. The transition from Traveler to Teacher has been a pretty drastic one, with elaborate differentiations in priorities and quantity of sleep. I’m so happy that we got the chance to see so much of the country before settling down for a few months. This is a completely new and different kind of endeavor though, and we get to thoroughly explore this region of Thailand in a way we weren’t able to do anywhere else in our travels because we were always moving on to the next place. So, Cheers, Tha Bo. We’re happy to be here.